The One With The Excuses

Hi all. Remember me?

First off, apologies for taking yet ANOTHER long leave of absence. When I last posted I was off home for a visit. After that I came back to London, then went off for another home visit. Then Uni started up again, and before I knew it, weeks had passed! I've been planning on posting again for most of this week, but never quite got round to it, and eventually decided to just leave it until Monday.

But I'm posting now. You see, I realised that this 'putting off' wasn't limited to just the blog. I've been putting off a lot of things in the last couple of weeks. To cut a long story short...I fell off the wagon. Big time.

The problems started just after my successful Marathon Week. I had thought that having a few weeks holiday after last term would give me a lot of time, with no commitments, in which I could exercise easily and get away with a calorie-restricted diet. In fact, it worked in almost completely the opposite way - having a few weeks off with no commitments meant I was sat in my room, twiddling my thumbs, with nothing to distract me from my appetite.

Another problem with the time off is that my sleep pattern got shot to hell. I actually wound up in a strange 48-hour cycle, where I would stay awake for 36 hours, have a massive 12-hour sleep binge, and then repeat again. This meant I was groggy in the morning and absolutely worn out the next morning, so I a) didn't feel up to any exercise, and b) was drinking a lot of high-sugar energy drinks.

And it wasn't just the sleep I've been binging on. In this last week, we had a full reversion to the old pattern - "I'll start dieting again tomorrow, so let's get all my binging out of my system tonight with one last blow out". We all remember how well that worked in the past, right?

All in all, its been a terrible couple of weeks (punctuated by the somewhat good news that I passed my last set of exams!). The funny thing is though, there's a part of me which is glad.

You see, its obvious to me (and no doubt to you) that I've been treading water for MONTHS. The old enthusiasm that drove me to my early successes at the start was replaced with...I don't know...satisfaction? I was pleased with my progress (and I am still a lot lighter than I was this time last year), but I have been losing and then regaining the same weight since last summer. I've never really rediscovered that old zeal...until (perhaps) now.

You see, for the first time in a long time, I actually feel FAT again. Part of my brain has been registering the regular small losses I've made, but has been discounting the gains that undo them. As such, a moment came this week where I looked in the mirror, and the figure reflected back didn't match the expectation in my head anymore. It all came crashing back into focus. And I got MAD.

I'm ready to start doing this properly again. I'm going to wrap up this post now as its already too long, but there are going to be some changes coming - changes to how I use this blog, and the content/style of my posts. I'll explain more in a future entry, and will log off for now. I'll see you tomorrow for a catch-up weigh-in, where you can expect a large gain (I expect), but also a promise...